--even now I wonder over that
unaccountable desertion--and much she must have suffered from the image
of that small bed, beside which she used to sit for hours, perfectly
happy from the sight of that face which I too so often blessed in her
hearing, because it was so like her own! Where is my child? Have I
frightened her away into the wood by my unfatherly looks? She too will
come to hate me--oh! see yonder her face and her figure like a fairy's,
gliding through among the broom! Sorrow has no business with her--nor
she with sorrow. Yet--even her how often have I made weep! All the
unhappiness she has ever known has all come from me; and would I but
leave her alone to herself in her affectionate innocence, the smile that
always lies on her face when she is asleep would remain there--only
brighter--all the time her eyes are awake; but I dash it away by my
unhallowed harshness, and people looking on her in her trouble wonder to
think how sad can be the countenance even of a little child. O God of
mercy! what if she were to die!"
"She will not die--she will live," said the pitying pastor; "and many
happy years--my son--are yet in store even for you--sorely as you have
been tried; for it is not in nature that your wretchedness can endure
for ever. She is in herself all-sufficient for a father's happiness. You
prayed just now that the God of Mercy would spare her life--and has He
not spared it? Tender flower as she seems, yet how full of life! Let not
then your gratitude to Heaven be barren in your heart; but let it
produce there resignation--if need be, contrition--and, above all,
forgiveness."
"Yes! I had a hope to live for--mangled as I was in body, and racked in
mind--a hope that was a faith--and bittersweet it was in imagined
foretaste of fruition--the hope and the faith of revenge. They said he
would not aim at my life. But what was that to me who thirsted for his
blood? Was he to escape death, because he dared not wound bone, or
flesh, or muscle of mine, seeing that the assassin had already stabbed
my soul? Satisfaction! I tell you that I was for revenge. Not that his
blood could wipe out the stain with which my name was imbrued, but let
it be mixed with the mould; and he who invaded my marriage-bed--and
hallowed was it by every generous passion that ever breathed upon
woman's breast--let him fall down in convulsions, and vomit out his
heart's blood, at once in expiation of his guilt, and in retribution
dealt out t
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